Having survived the outbreaks of Bird Flu and Swine Flu and Mad Cow Disease and the entire menagerie of epidemics that were supposed to have decimated the world’s population by now, we’ve not yet been panicked by the recent news of the spread of the Ebola virus. Having watched the government’s inept responses to other crises over the past several years, however, we are starting to get at least a bit nervous.
We had always regarded the Ebola virus as one of those unfortunate phenomena that seem to inflict only Africa, but now it has come to the quintessentially American city of Dallas. It flew in on a jetliner from Liberia, hitching a ride on an infected passenger from that stricken country, and now it is feared that as many as 100 Americans have come in contact. Each of those has presumably come in contact with another 100 or so people, who in turn would have come in contract with another 100, and although the risk of transmission is said to be remote in every case the extrapolation is still unsettling. Whatever degree of risk is entailed, it could have been eliminated entirely by the sorts of travel restrictions that such countries as Great Britain and France have instituted, which shakes one faith that a governmental and medical system which declined to take such measures to deal will be able to effectively deal with the consequences of not doing so.
The extraordinary amount of press coverage devoted to the disease has already revealed several instances where the most up-to-date protocols for dealing with the disease with have not been followed, including an unpleasant account the infected patient’s vomit being cleaned off a sidewalk by power hoses that no doubt sent dangerous bacteria flying off into the atmosphere, and one shudders to think what mistakes might come next. So far as we can tell the government decided not restrict flights from infected countries partly because that had been a Bush administration idea, and partly because it was thought that discriminating on the basis of a deadly disease might offend African sensibilities. Such pointless political considerations are likely to override medical necessity again in the coming days, if the government’s recent history of border security and presidential security are any guide, it does not inspire confidence.
American troops have been deployed to Africa to fight the Ebola virus, as if it were the sort of enemy that can be vanquished by military might, and for the usual rationale that it’s better to fight abroad rather than at home. Letting the disease fly into the homeland at the same time seems rather odd, though, and we hope this policy will soon be rescinded. A more discriminatory policy regarding who gets into the country even without the Ebola virus would also be welcomed, for medical and national security and economic and cultural reasons, but that seems too much to hope for.
The situation has already prompted the survivalists to take precautions beyond their usual paranoid preparedness, and the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan is predictably blaming it all on a white supremacist conspiracy to kill black people which is currently being carried out by the first black president, although it was apparently launched at some nonexistent point in history when Henry Kissinger was serving as Secretary of State to President George H.W. Bush, but we’re remaining relatively calm. We’re counting on those reportedly low transmissions rates, though, and not the government. There have been strange accounts of Ebola victims awakening from the dead, and we note proudly that this is “Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness Month” here in Kansas, but otherwise the government doesn’t seem ready for the coming challenges.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 